September 11th - 8 years later

Last year I blogged on my memories of the day.

I was talking to Boon this morning and I remarked how for us, Pearl Harbor is something that we don't actively think about, or remember the date of, at least not as anything but 'When did it happen again?' - and this morning I even got it wrong. I thought it was December 14th. It's December 7th.

It made me wonder ... when will that time come for us? Will it ever come for those of us who were old enough to be affected by it? Will this always be a day that makes us tear up, even in some small way?

Those who were alive during the days of Pearl Harbor, those who were affected by it... they'll never forget that date. To them, every December 7th is a day to remember. A day to wear a flag pin or a red-white-blue shirt, or if they're blogging, to blog about it.

Is September 11th that day for us? The first few years, in preparation for the day, I'd get together with some of my classmates and we'd make a basket full of red-white-blue ribbon pins and leave the baskets around campus.

Then when that stopped, I would wear a red-white-blue shirt - a white shirt with a red-white-blue heart in sequins on it. Or one of my 9-11 T-shirts.

Now, I'm not. I could technically say I'm wearing red-white-blue because my pants are cream colored, my work top is red, and my shirt is blue. But I feel very unpatriotic. Some of this is due to the fact that I'm bad at planning. So even though I knew this day was coming, I didn't think to plan on what I'd wear, or try to find or make a pin, or anything.

So I'm a very bad 9-11 remembrance person. :(

Where is the cutoff on who the generations that lived through it are and the generations after it?

Do students who were in high school, or middle school... consider the day the way those of us who were adults do? Or to them, is it just another day where something bad happened to some old folks?

How many years must go by before the headline of today isn't something about 9-11?

Will it ever do that?

With the advent of the internet, videos, audiolinks, images - can be found everywhere. It's kept alive - and perhaps it should always be kept alive - because today I can click on a link that will show me exactly what was on TV at the time of the attacks. Because I can click on a link and listen to President Bush talk about the attacks the evening OF the attacks.

It doesn't die down. Perhaps it's good... it isn't something we should forget. But perhaps it's also bad. If we don't let it finally rest, can we ever heal?